New Opportunities--Implications and Recommendations for Business Education's Role in Non-Traditional and Organizational Settings

Bronner, Michael; Kaliski, Burton S.

Delta Pi Epsilon Journal, v49 n1 p32-37 Win 2007

Business educators have long been prepared for service in a wide range of settings; however, these settings have been concentrated in secondary education, teaching business subjects at the 7-12 levels with the emphasis on high school programs. Thus, for so many of those in the field of business education, their career path was quite simple: earn a bachelor's degree in business education, including a complete student teaching experience. With this background, they would be certified as a comprehensive business educator and equipped to get a job as a business teacher at the secondary school level. Their profession was growing, their jobs were secure, and their career path was certain. They would earn a master's degree, move up on the salary schedule, and one day become department head. All was rosy, until the day that the blooms on the roses died and secondary school business education programs dwindled. Some of them moved to the two-year college level of teaching, others earned a doctorate and moved to the college/university level or to business teacher education, others to the middle school, and still others to the private business school. Those who did not move retired or left the profession. Opportunities were few in the traditional world of business education, while opportunities outside of this traditional model were hardly thought of as viable choices. Today, in these early years of the 21st Century, there are both new and reinvented opportunities for business educators, so long as they are willing to "think outside the box" and consider things that are non-traditional. There are career paths in adult education, continuing education, and for-profit institutions. In addition to these curricular arenas, the expanding need for instructors with strong teaching skills coupled with business backgrounds and an understanding of the corporate environment can be workplace educators in the corporate university setting. In this article, the authors look at the nature of each of these nontraditional venues and the role that the flexible business educator is able to play in each of them. In addition, they provide implications and recommendations for business teachers to think outside of the traditional secondary education box and to explore these new and emerging challenges.